Tag: Bruce Hall

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Bruce Hall at Art at the Cave on October 10, 2024

September 15, 2024

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Bruce Hall

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

7 pm

Thursday, October 10

Art At The Cave

108 E Evergreen Blvd

Vancouver, WA 98660

https://artatthecave.com

ANTI-RACIST, LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,

PRO-CHOICE, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

$5 Suggested donation

No one will be turned away for lack of funds

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry.

Bruce D. Hall is a poet and short story writer from southeastern Washington. The chapbook Poems From A Big Beard Poet is his first collection of published poetry. His poetry has appeared in Poets in the Shops in Vancouver, Washington, and on C-Tran buses as part of the Poetry Moves program. (Note to readers: if you do not submit, you will not get published).

Unlike most poets and writers, Bruce did not start writing at an early age. His very large family told stories at family gatherings, some of which could be believed. BS is a family tradition. His work has been called highly visual. This comes from a strict high school creative writing instructor, Bob Smith. Bruce rewrote his first paper 13 times before he got a B+, the lowest passing grade a paper could receive. He earned a B.S. degree, not the family kind mentioned previously, from a respected university in Electrical Engineering. His only writing was technical papers. Work brought Bruce to Vancouver in 2012. He signed up for Wildfire Writing, Christi Krug’s evening writing class at Clark College. The infection by muse had begun. As of this writing, no vaccine has been produced. He signed up for a poetry writing workshop taught by Clark County Inaugural Poet Laureate Christopher Luna. This brought Bruce to Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, where he was a regular reader until the pandemic allowed telework and relocation to be with his life partner Suzie Stacey and close to grandchildren.

November 2024 is the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. This year’s remaining featured readers are Clark County Poet Laureate Susan Dingle and Debra Elisa.

Send an email to printedmattervancouver@gmail.com to receive The Work, Christopher Luna’s monthly newsletter featuring news and events for poets in Vancouver, WA, Portland, OR and surrounding areas.

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing. As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Brianna Renae at Art At The Cave January 11, 2024

December 28, 2023

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Brianna Renae

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

7 pm

Thursday, January 11

Art At The Cave

108 E Evergreen Blvd

Vancouver, WA 98660

https://artatthecave.com

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, PRO-CHOICE,

ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

$5 Suggested donation

No one will be turned away for lack of funds

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

Brianna Renae is a spoken word poet & public speaker born and raised in Portland Oregon. She is the author of her debut poetry collection Her Way with Words and the founder of The People’s Poets which is a BIPOC open mic created to amplify marginalized voices. She had the pleasure of opening for bestselling author Rupi Kaur in 2022. This year Brianna Renae was crowned Portland Poetry Slam’s 2023 Grand Slam Champion. She writes in hopes to inspire people to recognize the power in their stories.

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing. As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.

Christopher Luna Interviewed by People of Vancouver, WA

February 5, 2019

Printed Matter Vancouver co-founder Christopher Luna was recently featured on People of Vancouver, WA:

Instagram
YouTube

Christopher would like to thank Steve and Emily for this wonderful video. He is also grateful to Leah Jackson for her many years of support for The Work and Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. Finally, a hearty shout out to those who attended the workshop at Niche that afternoon (and appear briefly in the video): Stella Guillory, Diane Corson, Denise Campbell, Suzanne LaGrande, Robert Syverson, Paula John, Cathie Padgett, Sonja Gellerson, and Bruce Hall.

THE WORK Ginsberg and Stein

Here is the text which accompanies the video on the People of Vancouver WA YouTube Channel:

Christopher Luna is a poet, teacher, editor and was the first Poet Laureate for Clark County. He has been hosting Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, since 2004, and we caught up with him at his writing workshop, also known as The Work, which is held on the second Saturday of every month at Niche Wine Bar on Main St.

“The name for the workshop comes from a couple of lines in a poem by Allen Ginsberg called Memory Gardens, where he says ‘What is the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.’ I interpret that as let’s, as poets, in a culture where our work is not always completely understood or respected, let’s take it seriously enough to look at it as work. I think there are some people, even other writers, who don’t see poetry as work because they tend to be shorter than novels. I want to encourage poets in the workshop to own being a poet. To have fun, but to take the work seriously.”

Ginsberg himself co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, where Luna earned an MFA in Writing and Poetics. It was there that Luna learned about outreach, developing writing workshops and going out into the community to teach. After becoming Clark County’s first Poet Laureate, he launched the Poets in the Schools Program, which continues sends writers into local educational settings to lead poetry workshops to this day.

For more information about Christopher Luna’s coaching and editing services, Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, or The Work, visit https://printedmattervancouver.com/

Music: Bass Walker – Film Noir by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/&#8230😉
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-…
Artist: http://incompetech.com/